Jayapal: Trump Wants The Wall Because He Wants To End Legal Immigration

8:26 AM 01/11/2019 | Media

Mike Brest | Reporter

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Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said Thursday night that Trump’s desire for a border wall is in fact stemming from his “ultimate goal,” which is to shut “down every form of legal immigration.”

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“Do you think a deal can be made? Or do you think this is fundamentally existential and cannot be made?” MSNBC host Chris Hayes asked Jayapal during a Thursday night interview.

“It is fundamentally existential if he continued to insist on a wall and you just said it so beautifully, Chris. This has never been about a wall. He could have gotten funding a couple of years ago or a year ago for a wall,” Jayapal responded. “It was part of a deal that was proposed. Not all of us agreed with that deal, but it was proposed to him and he down because his ultimate goal is, as you said, to make America ‘pure’ in the sense of not having immigrants, not having folks of color here and shutting down every form of legal immigration.”

Damaris Alejandra Tejeda, 15, a migrant from Honduras, part of a caravan of thousands traveling from Central America en route to the United States, poses in front of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico in Tijuana, Mexico, November 23, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

She continued:

All to throw a bone to those people. And the only thing I can hope is that the people that he’s throwing the bone to are actually a minority of people. What’s interesting, Chris, is if you look at where immigration faired in the 2018 elections, we actually found people turning away from this view that it was too racist, too bigoted, too xenophobic.

The government has now been shut down for 21 days with Democrats refusing to fund the wall that the White House wants. The White House initially asked for nearly $6 billion dollars for the wall, with the Democrats unwilling to agree. Trump explained on Thursday that he “almost definitely” will resort to declaring a national emergency to get the funding.